By now my protagonist is about to meet the heroine from Saga One, Similar But Not the Same. Here is a paragraph that leads up to this chance encounter:

"Alex had forty minutes to eat his lunch as he headed for the university campus diner. The cafeteria was crowded as he maneuvered by many occupied tables with his lunch precariously held with one hand while his other arm held his epad. His dark handsome looks attracted many of the young ladies as he passed them by without noticing their approval. Spying two students up ahead that had just rose from a small table in the middle of the room; Alex hurried over and sat down in one of the metal chairs scraping the floor as he slid closer to the table. He pulled out his lunch from the paper bag and placed it and his epad upon the table in front of him. Just as he was about to eat a thick salmon and avocado sandwich, he looked up to see a frazzled and confused young woman heading in his direction.Her arms were full of binders, papers and an etablet that kept trying to slide off the top of her holdings. She was tall, slender, and blond, about twenty-four or twenty-six, he judged as she made her way toward his table."

A small brown hand reached down to pick up another gleaming stone lying on the surface of the desert floor. The morning sun glowed over the landscape creating long sinuous shadows from creosote bushes and nearby buildings.The Navajo boy loved roaming the desert collecting the occasional luminous rocks. Sometimes he would find a piece of metal from armies of days gone by, or he imagined great warriors of his past fighting over gold or defending a castle he had made of stones gathered together. ----“Alex, my boy, how would you like to go into town with me tomorrow? Should be a light day so I can show you around the store.”“Sure, Poppa, that would be great!” Alex responded with glee as his smile stretched from ear to ear.“OK, now that is settled, let’s both of us get back to work before Mim comes out here and sees us loafing about.”“Yes, sir,” Alex answered running back to the wood pile.Alex’s short arms couldn't fit around much of the wood. After his third trip into the house, he placed the final armload near the fireplace. The baking roast aroma waft throughout the little home as it gave off a warm and inviting atmosphere.Gerald’s friend, George Wolf, stopped by with his boy Frank to pass the time of day. Mim, checking on the roast temperature, noticed the old clunker, what George called a truck out the front window.“Hmmph! That no good lie tellin’ mooch, he’s always fillin’ Gerald’s head with nonsense.”“What Grams?” Alex said hearing her with his last load of chopped firewood.“Never you mind Alex, and don’t you listen to that man,” she instructed the boy. “Now go play with your friend.”“Yes um,” Alex replied running out to Frank.“Race ya’ around the barn,” Frank challenged Alex.“You’re on,” Alex said starting before Frank blinked.The boys ran around the barn twice until they stopped at the large door. George was talking the loudest.

My story begins with a native boy, Alex Blackfhawk, growing up in Arizona who becomes a police detective in Tucson, Arizona. As a boy he finds a piece of metal on the desert floor, which guides him into manhood. Three murders take place until one of the 'dead' shows up, his friend in forensics dies, and an informant is killed.Alex places a distraught woman in a safe house and follows a rich suspect to Mars.Amid an errant alien, Alex's visions, and preventing the Mars station from blowing up, politics on Earth cause the arming of a destructive satellite.